Yesterday in class I finally understood something because of Joe's project: the miracle of life is music.
Now I'm not sure if this is what Joe meant when he said music is with the sperm and the egg, because maybe I took it too literally. But I loved his description of music as the representation of both the water and the wave simultaneously. Music can be written down in a formula on paper, but the experience of the music cannot be explained on a piece of paper or broken down into some kind of arbitrary formula. Immediately when I heard this I thought of an experience I've had listening to music. I'm sure we can all think of a time when we were listening to music and some kind of transcending experience. Some weeks ago I attended a piano concert at person's house. The concert was held in the living room which had massive floor-to-ceiling windows with a view of the falling autumn leaves in the background of a beautiful grand-piano. When the man started to play (I think he was playing Rachmaninoff), I found peace in the chaos that is my life for those ten minutes. I just stared at those falling leaves and didn't think about anything; nothing else existed in that moment, and I couldn't help a huge, goofy smile spreading across my face. Now what I experienced from this music I just tried to describe to give you an idea, but I can't really put it in words, and no one can reproduce it exactly the same.
Relating that to life, I realized life is also a simultaneous existence of both formula and experience (the describable and the indescribable), which is why we call it the miracle of life. We are made from the combination of DNA found on chromosomes that we get from our father and mother. These then make up our genes that give us specific traits and characteristics. This is the formula of life. But this cannot exist without the experience of life: the making of a new life (yes, sex) and the birth of a child. The indescribable joy on a parents face when they see their child for the first time. No one can put that into a formula. But both the experience and formula cannot exist without the other, but that is what makes it a miracle. The miracle that is life.

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